Why Marshall's MVP award in Pro Bowl matters

The Dolphins wide receiver took over the Pro Bowl and scored four touchdowns -- on catches of 74, 29, 47 and 3 yards -- and set a record with six catches for 176 yards.

No biggie, right? It's only the Pro Bowl, right? Nobody cares about the Pro Bowl, right? Do that during the season when it counts, right?

Well, right ... and wrong.

Look, Marshall obviously did his best work in a game that doesn't count, winning the MVP award and making the Dolphins organization look good. And, yes, we all wish he would do this kind of work in games the Dolphins are playing.

But the point I'm making here is this game gave you a view of the possibilities. It showed you what Marshall might look like if he had a Pro Bowl quarterback throwing him the ball every game. Argue all you want that players were going only half-speed, but in that game of players going half-speed, Marshall was still the best player.

Argue he had a Pro Bowl receiver on the other side, helping him, but you must still admit he was the best receiver on the field. And you cannot dismiss the fact every receiver was working against a Pro Bowl secondary. Every one of them.

And in that venue, in that sitiuation, Marshall was still be best receiver in the game.

So I submit that if the Dolphins someday, perhaps in 2012, give Marshall a Pro Bowl quarterback to work with, his work definitely would look better.

How do I know this?

Irving Fryar was mediocre in New England for years and years and he came to Miami to play with Dan Marino and suddenly he was a 1,000-yard receiver. Nat Moore's career was left for dead when he played with Don Strock and David Woodley.

When Marino came on the scene, Moore's career was suddenly revived.

The point I'm making is simple: A better quarterback makes the receiver better. Even Marshall admitted that after the game.

"Since Jay Cutler I've had a few different quarterbacks and being in the Pro Bowl you have these elite quarterbacks and it's all them," he said. "They put [the ball] in the right spots and make it easy for me to make the catch. It's all the quarterbacks."